alec karakatsanis@equalityalec.bsky.social · 1h ago

With politicians/pundits bashing misleading caricatures of the left's views on police/prisons, it's a perfect time to remind people that reducing size and power of repressive bureaucracy is one of the most consistently popular ideas over 40 years of polls: equalityalec.substack.com/p/convention...

The symptomatic and violent horniness about El-Sayed puts the necessity of Platner and Rogan into relief as minstrel-adjacent figures who make white masculinity feel bodily again

Tressie McMillan Cottom@tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 4h ago

Abdul’s physical stature is going to drive them nuts, not unlike the way AOC’s attractiveness drives them over the edge.

Thinking about LLMs in a future democratic socialist context (knock on wood) why not look to “analog” frameworks like driving exams and licenses to qualify AI use by age and demonstrated literacy? As one tool among many to think with.

But what DPF does do is make finance itself available as a terrain on which those democratic questions can be asked and institutions redesigned, rather than treating the existing financial architecture as the neutral baseline.

But these are absolutely real problems of public design and democracy. I don’t think DPF offers a single neat institutional formula for solving them, because they implicate much bigger questions about representation, accountability, expertise, discretion, capture, etc.

We don’t usually ask how to protect financial markets from over-regulation or special interests in quite the same way because market arrangements have been naturalized, even though they’re already densely regulated.

Meanwhile, back in 1920...

Chob@chob316.bsky.social · 2d ago

"S*X" "N*DITY" What the fuck are we even doing anymore?

It's a sign of a broken political economic framework that we expect the postal service to be profitable. Just completely detached from the material significance of having a postal service and how materially unsustainable life without it would be.

USPS reports $2.5B loss in third quarter as financial woes persist

The United States Postal Service’s (USPS) net losses for the third quarter of 2026 reached $2.5 billion, the agency reported Friday, as its leadership continues to look for solutions to preve…

thehill.com

And then exclusion gets to masquerade as “reality.” We’ve built institutions around scarcity and precarity, and then far right gets to point at the conflicts they produce and inhabit the zero sum logics with scapegoating and bigotry.

Because labor markets, housing systems, public budgets, etc. organized to make every new person appear as a competitor for a fixed stock of jobs and public goods. Immigration gets narrated automatically as displacement as if this isn’t a public design that could be transformed.

“Open borders” starts from a basically unassailable moral intuition that immigrants are not inherently better or worse, or more or less trustworthy, than people whose families happened to arrive here earlier. But the debate is framed within thoroughly naturalized political economic premises. 1/

We’re trying to build egalitarian politics on a reactionary operating system. We have to change the operating system too.

Prototyping Democratic Public Finance With the Seattle Loop

By Will Beaman Seattle is once again being told that a projected budget deficit requires difficult choices about which public commitments the city can continue to honor. Councilmember Robert Kettle…

moneyontheleft.org

What @moneyontheleft.bsky.social calls Democratic Public Finance brings public design into the picture. More people don’t just consume a fixed stock of capacity. Their needs COULD generate claims around which we create employment, housing, transit, schools, etc. A job guarantee is an example.

Thank you, @rooseveltinstitute.org! 🙏

Money on the Left@moneyontheleft.bsky.social · 2d ago

Big thx to @rooseveltinstitute.org for highlighting our important conversation with @victorpickard.bsky.social about the need for democratic public media that resist capture by powerful corporate, oligarchic, & authoritarian interests.

Dems and Republicans differ when it comes to revenue sources, size of government, and priorities. But there is always consensus that the wealthy should exist and they should be catered too.

What we could say is that while we have the millionaires tax, which is a good thing, the millionaires have to be (according to establishment politicians) “safely corralled”, in order to draw revenue from. This means cozying up to their interests and ensuring they can remain wealthy.

Chim ☭@chimmysthoughts.northsky.social · 2d ago

This whole thread is spot on. $500k worth of propaganda to sanitize all the terrible shit that Pedersen has done. He reflexively supports corporations over people.

That’s a message & a movement that is winning, regardless of election outcomes. It’s why this fight is one worth having, & I will continue to remind our community, our base, our movement that nothing moves if we don’t push. We’ll keep pushing to November & beyond for the WA we know is possible.8/8

Look around at the Democratic incumbents fending off more progressive challengers across the state, & you can see them committing to progressive priorities that they never have before — priorities we’ll get to hold them to if they prevail in November. 7/

In media coverage of this race & others, social programs like universal childcare & universal healthcare, bold taxes on corporations & the ultra-wealthy, & criticisms of austerity budgeting that underfunds our schools are all getting air-time in ways they haven’t before. 6/

Suddenly he’s expressing public support for ranked choice voting for the first time in his 20-year tenure. Suddenly he starts talking about housing affordability, & giving a d@mn about renters, & calling himself a fighter (lol), & distancing himself from corporate tax breaks he’s doled out. 5/

In every single race where an establishment Democratic incumbent was being challenged on the left, the incumbent leaned into the message of the challenger, not the other way around. 3/

Suddenly we’re hearing the Senate Majority Leader — the *only* member of the 43rd LD delegation who never endorsed social housing or Prop 1A to fund it — talk about state level support for Seattle’s social housing developer. 4/

His consultants can dismiss the left as loud disproportionate to our power, but the establishment wouldn’t have spent money like that (for just the primary!) if they weren’t afraid of the weakness of their own messaging too. 2/

I don’t actually hate all of this analysis here, but here’s what it’s missing. Pedersen & PACs that support him spent *half a MILLION* to paint him as a reliable progressive & hide his 15 out of 20 years as a member of the centrist roadkill caucus. 1/

Home-based providers are the backbone of our child care system. Universal child care would not be possible without them. They should not have to shoulder emergencies on their own.

Mamdani launches emergency grants for home-based childcare providers

The micro-grants will range from $1,000-$10,000.

gothamist.com

Contesting the End of India’s Job Guarantee with Khush Vachhrajani moneyontheleft.org/2026/03/01/c...

If my grocer and my credit card company can get me rewards, why can’t my orca card?

Yes, I said fun public goods. We should be funning them.

“Fascists are at the gates, but they will pay the fares.” Guys, there’s better ways to fun public goods. We don’t always have to treat them as being profitable enterprises. What investments will attract more riders that pay fares or are there incentives we can give that encourage fare payment?

The Urbanist@theurbanist.org · 3d ago

An advancing Sound Transit proposal would spend $6 million for planning and design of fare gates at 14 Link stations, with a future Sound Transit board vote expected to allocate $87 million for full construction. Story: www.theurbanist.org/sound-transi...